Walk in My Combat Boots

Jason Droddy and his twin brother, Kevin, entered the Army on March 18, 2009. They served six years with 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment; deployed six times; and executed more than 150 missions each. Jason got out as a sergeant. His real estate company, the Droddy Group, helps veterans buy and sell their homes.

I’m okay with dying. You have to be okay with it, consciously or subconsciously, to be good at this job. If I’m not okay with it, I’ll hesitate, and I will get killed. There are no second chances.

My Ranger missions involve looking for and capturing certain high-value Iraqi targets. We go out mainly at night. It’s a lot of kicking in doors and rushing into rooms, not knowing who—or what—we’ll encounter. Each time it’s a mystery. I get into a lot of firefights, some of which are pretty intense.

My twin brother, Kevin, who is also a Ranger, is in a different part of the country, doing the exact same thing I’m doing. This is the first time we’ve ever spent any extended time apart.

When I’m having a weak moment, tired, anything like that, I think of Kevin. Back at basic training and during Ranger school, we never showed weakness because we wanted to be strong for each other, always. I have to be strong and focused so I can return home to my family.

And there’s no question in my mind that Kevin and I are coming home together.

One night I’m given a mission brief about a high-value target hiding inside a compound. Our guys have been watching this compound all day long, and certain individuals who appear to be guarding the compound walk back and forth from the perimeter to a wood line that is basically facing the compound. From comm chatter, we find out there’s a heavy World War II–era Russian machine gun sitting somewhere in the wood line.

“Protect the machine gun,” we hear these guys say. “Don’t let it get wet. Make sure someone is watching it at all times.”

That night we do a landing within three hundred meters of the compound. I run off the back of the helicopter. The rotor wash is intense, and the brownout is bad; I can’t see anything, and it’s loud, chaotic.

The bad guys don’t know we’re here. They’re staying low in the poppy field as we creep toward them. I see one guy hustling away from the compound to the wood line, and because of all the radio chatter I know he’s going for the big machine gun. I can’t let him get to it. I need to protect the force at all cost. Now.

I fire with my squad automatic weapon (SAW), a machine gun that fires long six-to-nine-round bursts, and end up trading shots with the bad guys. It’s the first time I initiate combat.

The guys I’m with—we’re tough, trying to be manly men and acting like we’re not scared or worried, but they know how close I am with my brother. Anytime the leadership finds out Kevin is in contact with the enemy, they always invite me up to the Joint Operations Center (JOC) to watch the intelligence surveillance reconnaissance (ISR) feed from the drones so I can keep an eye on what’s going on, watch what’s happening. It’s tough to watch Kevin in a fight but there’s also a relief in being able to see him and know he’s okay.

We start doing some remain over day (ROD) missions, where we infiltrate one night and then move to the target compound and set up shop right before sunrise. We remain over day in a compound and then fight, pick fights, or just wait for a fight. The next night we move on to another target, or move through some trench lines and into some really bad areas.

I’m with a private, the two of us walking point on a trench line running from one fighting position to another fighting position. We’re walking along the interior edge when he says to me, “Hey, keep your eyes open. We saw some movement here during the day.”

I work my way down the trench system. Then it makes a little shape, like an S. I look down the trench, but I can’t see all that much. I move, trying to stay as quiet as possible.

I hear talking. I’m thinking it’s one of my guys just being loud, like telling everyone to back off, try to spread out more. Then I listen a little closer and hear the voices speaking Pashto, the Iranian language of Pashtuns—and they’re close, really close. I have an adrenaline dump and stop dead in my tracks.

I jump on the radio. “I’ve got voices around this corner.”

A first sergeant responds. “Get over the wall. Keep it between you guys and see if you can spot where these guys are at.”

I back off a little bit. My squad jumps the wall and then I continue toward the S turn. As soon as I get around it, I hear machine-gun fire open and pepper the wall the squad is ducking behind.

We basically get up on this wall, throw the machine gun up over the top, and press fire. We shoot two of the guys who are trying to flee. I know there’s a third one somewhere. Every time I peek over the wall, I see a muzzle flash from below, where this third guy is shooting up at us.

My SAW jams. I take every grenade I have and throw them over the wall so I can buy myself enough time to fix the jam.

The bad guy stops firing. I wait.

It’s quiet.

“Push over the wall,” the first sergeant says. “Make sure you have support.”

We set up support. The guys in 3rd Squad push over the wall and begin to clear the trenches.

We jump over the wall. Right in front of us is a dirt walkway that drops down into a six-foot trench. We stand topside, looking down into it. As I walk, I find a little mud bridge that crosses the trench. Down to my right, my squad leader sits down on the edge of the trench, looks underneath the bridge to make sure the third guy that was shooting at us isn’t there.

I cross the bridge. On the other side I find a stockpile of guns the enemy tried to cover up. We’re in a bad area for IEDs, so I leave the stockpile alone, come back across the bridge, and start working my way down toward my squad leader. He drops into the trench, and I see gunfire coming from underneath the bridge.

I immediately turn and go to jump the wall to get cover. Then I hear my squad leader scream, and, knowing he got hit, I turn and run back to the trench line, where I see my private pulling my squad leader out of the trench. I jump down and give them suppressive fire, focusing on the area underneath the bridge. I can’t really see where the shooter is, so I just shoot everything to give them time to pull out my squad leader.

As soon as I know he’s out and clear, I jump out and jump back over the wall. Immediately we back off enough so the birds can drop fire.

I catch my breath and think to myself, I don’t think I can walk anymore.

I fall over.

I’ve been running on straight adrenaline, it was the only thing keeping me going, and now I’m starting to come off of it and my body realizes how tired it is, and I collapse.

I lie on my back in between rows inside a grape orchard, waiting for the fire to come, and I start thinking about Kevin. I pray he’s okay, wherever he is. Safe.

We’re going to go home, together, I keep telling myself.

The birds arrive and destroy the trench line from one end to the other.

Jodi Michelle Pritchard’s father was in the Air Force. She was born in Ohio, and when she was six months old she moved to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia—a one-horse town that had one stoplight. An only child and a self-described tomboy, Jodi loved playing in the dirt with G.I. Joe figures, and at an early age she fell in love with the military. Her great-grandfather served in World War I, her grandfather in World War II, and her father volunteered to go to Vietnam. Jodi wanted to continue her family’s military legacy and, like her father, joined the Air Force. In August of 1998, with a certification as a national registered paramedic, she attended basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. She’s a flight nurse in the West Virginia Air National Guard. Her current rank is major.

My turn comes in 2003. I’m going to Iraq, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

We board the C-141 military transport plane with our medical equipment bags, flight gear, and chemical gear. IV pumps, cardiac monitors, and all the critical medical equipment we need are already all laid out, but we have to configure the space by hanging straps and putting up poles for our litter stations.

I also have my personal bag with me. It contains my death letter, my final message to my loved ones. I hope to God I don’t need it.

I’m a senior airman but, at twenty-three, the youngest of the group.

Tonight, we’re flying to Baghdad, which is not only the safest, most secure spot for us to land, it’s also the most central location to collect our patients: wounded soldiers, children, even prisoners. We’ll load them up and make the six-hour flight back to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Our pilot briefs us before we take off. “Listen, when we get into Iraqi air space, we have to go dark.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“We kill the lights and go in under night vision. You guys will have to use your goggles. Then we’re gonna do an assault landing.”

Oh, my gosh. I’ve done a practice assault landing on a C-130. A 141 is a completely different plane. A 141, I’ve heard, has to basically do a spiral in order to get to the ground.

When we hit Iraqi air space, everything goes black—no lights, just night. I’m buckled in. The loads block all the windows, and we can’t get up and see what’s happening outside.

I put on my helmet and flak vest.

The loadmaster looks at me and says, “You have to sit on it.”

“Sit on what?” I ask.

“Your flak vest,” he says. “When we spiral down to land, they’ll shoot at us, and the bullets can potentially come through the plane. Because of their direction, if you’re sitting on your vest, you’ll have a much better chance at not getting shot.”

“Well, why do I gotta wear a helmet then?”

Everyone starts laughing, including the loadmaster. It’s a comical moment, but I’m thinking: What the hell did I join?

We’re all sitting on our flak vests when we go radio silent, though we can hear our strapped-down loads clattering against the plane floor.

There’s no chatter among us, but on our headsets, we can hear the pilot, copilot, and engineer synchronizing, going through their checklist. “Okay,” I hear the pilot say to the copilot, “we’re starting our descent.”

The plane starts a hard-left rudder turn.

Starts to bank.

Then we start to do a spiral. It’s like a huge corkscrew—a roller coaster from hell.

And it keeps going and going and going.

The pilot says, “Gunfire, eleven o’clock.”

I can hear it, the gunfire happening outside.

They’re shooting at us.

The copilot says, “Gunfire, two o’clock.”

Even if the windows weren’t blocked, I couldn’t see the gunfire because I’m not on night vision. But the pilots can see it, and the plane is spiraling and spiraling—

Bam, we’re on the ground, pulling back the engines.

I have no idea what’s about to happen next.

They lower the ramps. A representative from the hospital and one from MASF—the Mobile Air Staging Facility—come on board, hand us paperwork, and start talking, only we can’t hear them because the plane’s engine is still running. Why haven’t they shut down the plane?

I quickly find out why: the airport is hot. The base is getting hit by multiple mortars.

“I can’t hear you—we can’t hear you,” I shout. “Just bring them on board, we’ll deal with it.”

We load the patients and take off. We have to corkscrew up for the same reason we had to corkscrew down—to avoid the antiaircraft threat.

Ten of our twenty patients are stretched out on litters. Good God, these poor things—some of them are all shot up, and some have lost limbs. One soldier is in a torturous-looking metal traction device locking together the ball of the hip to the femur bone. The contraption looks straight out of the horror movie Saw.

We run around with rolls of white medical tape, tear off an inch or two, and stick it to each pillow. On the tape, we write the patient’s pain scale, the wound location, the medication and dosage he receives.

We have to treat the patients while also dealing with the stresses of flying—like the g-forces which can be a detriment to a patient’s IV bag. We’re constantly adjusting IV bags—and we’re constantly looking in on the man in the traction device. His leg bones, held together by pins, rattled during takeoff, and they rattle every time we hit turbulence, causing him massive pain even though we’re trying our best to keep his leg as padded as possible.

Someone screams to use the rest room. He wants to get off the litter but can’t because he’s missing a leg.

Someone screams for narcotics. Beside him, another patient sits quietly, staring. With all that’s going on inside his head, he can barely answer our questions.

I check on a soldier who is missing half of his face. He looks up at me and says, “Ma’am, I need to know when this plane’s going to land. I need to know when I can get back to Iraq.”

“You’ve been shot, honey. Why don’t we give this some time, okay? You’ve been through a lot.”

“No, I want to go back.”

“I understand that. I get it. And I want you to go back. I do. But first we’ve got to get you to Ramstein so the doctors can take care of you. Let your body heal, and then we’ll get you back.”

“I’m good, I want to go back, I’m ready.”

He’s not the only soldier who says this to me during the flight. All the guys on board want to go back. Every single one.

That same year, our commander brings us into a room to explain our next mission.

“Your crew has three critical care nurses, and you’re one of the most highly qualified teams we have here at Ramstein,” he tells us. “We have three patients who are pretty sick.”

“How sick?” I ask.

“They’re going to die. They’re going home to die. We need to fly them to Bethesda, Maryland. You need to keep them alive until you get to Walter Reed.”

You can do this, I tell myself. “Okay,” I tell the commander. “We’ve got this.”

We’re given the plane’s tail number. The crew—all five of us—get out of our car and find the plane without a problem. I step on board.

Freeze.

What the hell is going on?

The front half of the plane is filled with caskets. Six of them.

Soldiers are draping an American flag on each one.